Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [101]
‘He’s already appeared in the paper. Take a look. His name and everything. He’s already an outcast. Please don’t send him to Badajoz, your honour.’
‘He’ll be cured there. He has an illness. And he’ll be cured.’
‘In prison? He’ll be cured in prison? How? With beatings? Ice-cold water? Electricity?’
Her chest was heaving. She seemed about to burst and the judge took Gabriel by the shoulder and moved off. All she did was cry. Silently, not with sobs. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘Please leave us alone.’
‘Fools,’ she said. ‘You fools!’
The judge glanced angrily in all directions. Being called a fool infuriated him. Somebody in the crowd might know him. This stinking fishwife, with her basket like a picture hat, calling the judge a fool. That’d make them laugh. No doubt Black Eye was in the vicinity. That bastard. Gabriel also looked around. He found the woman disagreeable, especially when she started crying. Crying and talking about electricity. A strange woman with a strange son, who was bothering his father and spoiling their walk. But it was also true this destination, Badajoz Prison, didn’t sound good next to Gran Antilla. On a pleasant Friday afternoon. With lots happening. On the crowded terraces, in their white jackets with anchor-like golden buttons, the waiters, instead of carrying drinks, resembled elegant sailors keeping their balance on the city’s deck.
An impression that wasn’t far away from the description the judge repeated like an advertising slogan, ‘In summer, Coruña’s an ocean liner.’
They’d walked down Real Street. As was their custom, they’d gone into Villar the chemist’s and weighed themselves on the scales. It was a magnificent machine, its brand and origin in large letters, ‘Toledo Scale Company (Ohio)’, which turned weighing yourself into a serious act, your body’s solemn incorporation into the industrial process. You stepped on to a platform and through the glass could watch the whole mechanism in action. Your weight activated it and, as you stood there, you couldn’t help seeing the device as part of yourself, transported to Ohio. When the judge weighed himself, there was a detail. He took off his hat and gave it to his son. Gabriel never knew how much his father weighed. He was slim, but had a strong constitution. And was very serious about keeping his weight in check. One of the features that distinguished him from the common herd. A definite aim he shared with Chelo, which made them different from most of their colleagues. Whenever they conducted a ‘review’, the term they used for gossip, their comments seemed to be ruled by the Ohio scales’ precise mechanism. For the most part, those under scrutiny were deemed to have put on weight.
The judge’s felt hat was very light, or so it seemed when Gabriel was holding it while his father weighed himself. Now, as he got more and more angry at the Urchin Woman’s interference, the hat appeared to be something more than an article of clothing. Something of weight. Calcareous. Part of the body.
They were at the junction of Real Street and Rego de Auga, between the Rosalía de Castro theatre and Gran Antilla. Every urban setting has its speciality and, in Gabriel’s intimate topography, this was a warm, lively place meant for happy encounters and polite greetings. The sellers’ balloons and little ships rose above the field of heads. A good spot for Curtis to stop the horse Carirí and the children to mount the horse and have their photo taken, holding on to its natural mane, which was black as jet. Which is why the unexpected reference to Badajoz, for Gabriel, suddenly caused an orographical accident. If she hadn’t said anything, anything in particular, if she hadn’t given it a name, he’d have wandered over to the window of Gran Antilla, the confectioner’s, and so given his father an excuse to dispatch this plaintive woman with her cargo of prickles. But no. No. She had referred to that place which was the first